Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Snatch to the rescue

My ever resourceful and entertaining best friend Holly recently made a visit to celebrate my birthday with me, and in addition to her company, one of the gifts she brought was a terrific word game, Snatch, which she bought at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on a recent business trip to California.

Dan and I have made a habit of playing a game or two most evenings after dinner this winter. We've elected to forgo cable television, so other than rented DVDs we never watch the tube, preferring instead to read, do crossword puzzles, or play a game. Snatch is perfect for a winter evening, quick to set up, play, and pick up. It's great fun and is nicely designed, coming in a sturdy plastic tube printed with the directions (thus reducing opportunities to lose them) and snugly fitting cover. The basic premise of the game is to make words from Scrabble-like letter tiles until you've exhausted all available tiles or cannot form a word with the remaining tiles.

We are both pretty competitive, though, so it can be a bit tense, as a fundamental element of the game is snatching a word from another player, and adding letters to it to make a new word, i.e. bird becomes bride becomes bridles. We are pretty closely matched, although Dan is the stronger player, routinely snatching a word from me or seeing one the instant a new letter is revealed. In two games tonight, I won the first 32-20, and Dan won the second game 30-25.

If you are a fan of word games, check out Snatch. We are planning to bring the game on our upcoming trip to visit Mom & Dad in New York. It seems like a good game to travel with, being compact, self-contained, and fun.